Sermon Manuscript

[Video:  “Eagle Eyes - Bumper” - 0:27]

Friday night a group of guys from The Fountain headed out for a baseball game.  There were seven of us:  Brayden and Jason Carter, Joe Schulz, Dale Sleppy, Cory Steele, Tony Willmann, and myself.  We were going to Cincinnati to see the Reds play my beloved St. Louis Cardinals and it was a lot of fun.  We had a great time in the car hanging out and then just spending a night at the ballpark.  And as many of you know I love baseball.  I love the sights, sounds, and smells of baseball.  Especially the smells!  The food!  So before I left I did a quick Google search to see what my options for that night would be.  There was the Redlegs BBQ Walking Taco.  That looked pretty good!  Or the soft pretzel double cheeseburger!  Yum.  Then there was the Big Mozz Chicken Parm sandwich.  Or the Reuben sliders!  There were street tacos and chicken wings to choose from!  Or just the Baby Ruth Ice Cream toppings!  So many good options!  But not cheap!  However, there’s an “All You Can Eat Deal” at the Reds game where for $26 you get five hot dogs and unlimited drinks, chips, popcorn, and peanuts.  Not bad.

But have you ever stopped to consider how amazing it is that what we eat and drink tastes so good?  I mean.  Aren’t you glad that we were made to enjoy what we eat and drink?  Ah!!!  It’s so amazing!  Our food could be like my dog Lucy’s food!  Bland, boring, always the same.  But it’s not!  It’s diverse, it’s colorful, it’s creative, and it’s filled with flavor!  And while not everything we eat tastes good and we all have different tastes and different favorite foods we all get to enjoy eating and drinking.  Eating and drinking is necessary for life.  We have to eat and drink in order to live.  We cannot survive without eating and drinking.  Our bodies need the nutrients found in food in order to live.  Eating and drinking is necessary for physical life.

But it’s also necessary for spiritual life.  Because the Bible tells us that there is a certain type of food that we must eat and drink in order to live spiritually.  In order to have eternal life.  So that just as it’s necessary to eat and drink to have physical life there’s a type of food and drink that must be consumed to have spiritual life.  Because it will sustain you and give to you what you must have to stay alive spiritually.  So what is it?  What is the spiritual food and drink that we must consume in order to obtain and maintain our spiritual life?  Let’s find out.

If you have your Bibles turn with me now to the book of John chapter 6.  Today we’re going to be in verses 41-59.  As always, if you would like to follow along on our app feel free to do so.  It’s called Church Center and within the links Sunday Services and Message Notes you will find everything you need.  As you turn there and get prepared let me quickly remind you of where we are within our series of messages called Eagle Eyes where we are discovering high and lofty truths from the book of John.  We’re like eagles who can stare into the sun but we are staring into the Son of the Living God and learning more and more about Him.

Three weeks ago we began this series by examining John 1 where John began his Gospel with these words.  John 1:1 said “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”  Then verse 14 said that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  We call this the Incarnation.  The truth that God Himself took the form of a man.  And on that day we talked about how God wants us to live incarnationally.  He wants to come near us, dwell inside us, and change us from the inside out.  In week two we examined John 3 and the story of Jesus’ encounter with a man named Nicodemus.  Nicodemus, a Pharisee and ruler of the Jews, came to Jesus late at night and through his conversation discovered the love God has for him and for all people.  Because Jesus said in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”  And so he left that night processing the love of God and we left that week doing the same.  Thinking about the extent to which God loves all people and recognizing the love He has for us.  And then last week we examined John 4 and the story of the Woman of Samaria.  Because as Jesus traveled through Samaria He stopped by a well and met a woman who was an outcast to society.  But in that moment He revealed Himself as the Messiah to her.  He also answered a question about worship and we learned last week how we can worship God in spirit and truth each week here.  We do that through our conversations, celebrations, and commitments to Him.

And in John chapter 6 Jesus travels to Galilee where large crowds are starting to follow Him.  Five thousand at one point and they are all hungry.  So Jesus performs a miracle.  A miracle involving food.  He asks Philip, “Where are we going to buy bread to feed all of these people?”  And Philip says, “Even if we had 200 days wages we couldn’t feed all of these people!”  But Andrew points out a boy who has five loaves of bread and two fish.  And after Jesus gave thanks to God for that small portion He divided it and it multiplied feeding all five thousand.  And when they picked up the remaining pieces there were twelve baskets full!  After only starting with five loaves and two fish.  It was a miracle Jesus had performed regarding food.

The problem was that the people wanted to see more and more miracles.  And when Jesus left them and went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee they came looking for Him.  And when they found Him in verse 25 they said, “Rabbi, when did you come here?”  And Jesus said in verse 26, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”  In other words, “You’re here because you think I can take care of your physical needs but you’ve missed the point.  The miracle was meant to teach you something spiritually.”  And so Jesus continues and says in verse 27, “Do not work for the food that perishes but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.  For on him God has set his seal.”  The conversation then continues and they ask about works and Jesus says that the “work of God” is that you believe in Him.  Verse 29 says, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”  A fascinating statement.  We often hear that our salvation is not “works based”.  And in one sense that’s correct.  But in another it’s not.  Because Jesus says that “the work of God is to believe in the One whom He has sent.”  So God looks at our beliefs and our belief in Jesus and He counts it as a “work” done for Him.

Jesus will go on to then talk more about food.  Because the people bring up the story of how God fed the children of Israel in the desert through manna.  Bread which came down from heaven.  And Jesus will tell them that He is the “Bread of Life” and He came down from heaven.  But this upsets many of them and they begin to grumble.  Scan down to verse 41 where it says:

41 So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” 43 Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. 44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me— 46 not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Alright.  So let’s note a few things before we go any further.  Verse 41 tells us that when the Jews heard Jesus say that He is the “bread that came down from heaven” they became upset.  Remember.  He’s comparing Himself to the manna that came down from heaven for God’s people in the Old Testament.  But they become upset.  They complain so Jesus explains.  He says in verse 44, “No one can come to me unless the Father draws him.  And I will raise him on the last day.”  In other words, Jesus says, “Why are you complaining?  If you don’t believe in Me it’s because God has not yet drawn you to Me.  For nobody can come to Me unless He does that.  Salvation involves God drawing a person and that person choosing to come.  Two parts are at play here.”  He then goes on to say in verse 47 that “whoever believes has eternal life.”  And then in verse 48 “I am the bread of life.”  Second time He’s made that statement.  It’s also found earlier in verse 35.  But then Jesus draws a distinction between Himself as “the Bread of life” and the manna which came down in the wilderness.  Because He says in verse 51 that “If anyone eats of this bread he will live forever.  And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Now things are really getting controversial!  Because earlier Jesus had said that He was the Bread of Life who like manna came down from heaven.  But now He says that only those who eat of “this bread” will live forever.  And that “this bread” is His “flesh”?  Wait.  What?  Is Jesus saying that His followers are all cannibalists?  They all have to eat humans?  Eat His flesh?  I mean.  That’s crazy!  So what’s going on here?  Let’s continue.  Verse 52 says:

52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” 59 Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum.

Alright.  So when the Jews said, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” they were asking themselves, “How can this be?  Maybe we just misheard what He said?  Surely He didn’t mean that?”  But Jesus doesn’t back down.  No, He doubles down.  And He says in verse 52, “Listen.  Let me make this crystal clear.  If you don’t eat My flesh and drink My blood you have no life in you.  You have no eternal life in you.”  Wow.  This is one of those moments where C. S. Lewis was right when he said, “Jesus was either a liar, a lunatic, or Lord.”  He could only be one of those three!  And to tell people to eat His flesh and drink His blood is insane!  Unless it means something very different from what it sounds?  But Jesus says that unless you do that you have no life.  No eternal life in you.  He then says that whoever feeds on His flesh and drinks His blood has life and that He will raise that person up on the last day.  

By the way, “on the last day” refers to His Second Coming or Judgment Day.  The Day in which God will rapture up His people and all who have died faithfully in Jesus.  He uses that phrase four times in this passage.  So think about what that means.  Jesus knows of no future Millennial Kingdom.  He doesn’t know of an End Times scenario where He returns for the Church and the rapture takes place, followed by a 7 year period of tribulation, then He comes back again to establish His Millennial Kingdom and reigns for 1000 years before the final judgment.  Nope.  Apparently He missed the memo on that one.  When He comes back the rapture takes place and the world comes to an end.  On the “last day”.

He continues, though, here to describe how only those who eat and continue to eat or drink and continue to drink abide in Him or remain in Him.  He says “whoever feeds” two times in the final two verses.  Whoever feeds.  Plural.  So think about what He’s saying.  He’s saying, “Not only do you have to eat My flesh and drink My blood but you must do it over and over and over and over again.  That’s how you abide in Me and that’s how you live forever.  You eat and eat and eat.  You drink and drink and drink.”  

So what does all of this mean?  Let’s get to the point here.  What is Jesus trying to say?  Well, what Jesus is trying to say is that believing in Him is equivalent to eating His flesh and drinking His blood.  We know this because throughout this passage Jesus has equated believing in Him to eating and drinking.  It’s found in verses 29, 35, and 47.  Believing is a “work of God”.  It’s what God uses to separate those who are followers of God from those who are not.  And that’s what Jesus is doing here.  Remember.  They had seen a powerful miracle and knew that God had provided food for them in an amazing way.  Just as God did for the people in the wilderness through manna.  But what Jesus was saying to them is that “He was the Bread of Life”.  He is the One who can provide spiritual food that enables a person to both receive and retain eternal life.  Both to possess it initially and to keep it eternally.  He is the key.  Jesus is the food that we must eat.  He is the drink that we must drink.  We must eat His flesh and drink His blood.

So how do we do that?  How do we eat and drink in Jesus?  Well, I believe that this passage teaches us that we can do this by declaring three beliefs.  Three beliefs about eternal life that are directly tied to Jesus.  So let’s stop and consider each one this morning.

Here’s a first belief that we need to understand and that is this:  My eternal life is because of Jesus.  My eternal life is because of Jesus.  Jesus points this truth throughout.  He is the Bread of Life.  He says in verse 51 that “I am the living bread that comes down from heaven.  I anyone eats of this bread he will live forever.  And the bread I give for the life of the world is my flesh.”  So Jesus recognizes that through His death on the cross He will provide eternal life for all who believe.  This means that He is the source of eternal life.  He is the start of eternal life.  He is the beginning of eternal life.  And the eternal life we long for is made available because of Him.

Here’s a second truth:  My eternal life is continuous in Jesus.  Eternal life continues only through Jesus.  Eternal life is secure because of Jesus.  Don’t buy into the idea that all we have to do is make a single decision in our life for Jesus.  I made a decision when I was young so I’m good forever.  Really?  Because that’s not what Jesus says.  Verses 54, 56, and 58 all say that “whoever feeds and drinks” on Jesus has eternal life, keeps eternal life, and will live forever with eternal life.  Feeds and drinks are continuous actions.  You don’t eat one time in your life and are good.  You don’t drink once and stop.  You eat and eat and eat.  You drink and drink and drink.  Likewise, you must believe and believe and believe in Jesus.  A person who once believed but no longer does is not saved.  A person who gave their life to Christ and then walked away from Him is not saved.  You must continue in your belief in Him.  Why?  Because your eternal life is continuous only in Jesus.

And then third and finally:  My eternal life is finished by Jesus.  For times within this passage Jesus said that “I will raise him up on the last day.”  It’s found in verses 39, 40, 44, and 54.  So our eternal life starts because of Jesus.  It continues in Jesus.  And it finishes or comes to an end as we step into eternity when either Jesus returns or we die and He raises us from the dead.  We are raptured up and taken to be with Him.  Before the world is judged and sinners are punished.  Jesus repeats this truth over and over and over again.

With that in mind please understand how serious Jesus is about eating and drinking Him in.  He states this over and over again throughout this chapter.  Eating His flesh and drinking His blood is an act which must be done initially in order to receive Jesus and eternal life but it must be done throughout our lives to the very end.  We must believe in Him in order to receive eternal life and continue in eternal life.  We must believe that His death on the cross paid for our sins and that His resurrection demonstrated the victory we now have over death and we must continue to believe that.  We must eat and drink throughout our lives.  We must believe in Him throughout our lives.  Only then will we receive eternal life and only then will we keep eternal life.  But the question is, “Do you believe in Jesus and will you continue to do so?”  Because this is what will determine if you have eternal life and if you will keep it.

This is also why we practice communion as a church family each week.  Within the Independent Christian Church there are two very important sacraments.  Sacraments are holy practices that are set apart by God.  And the two we believe God wants us to emphasize are communion and baptism.  That is why on the left of our stage we have a cross and a communion table.  And on the right we have our baptismal.  The cross and communion table reminds us of the death of Jesus.  How He paid for our sins.  And the baptismal reminds us of how we died to ourselves but have been raised to a new life in Him.  Both are very important to us as a church family.

And we believe both should be done each week.  That’s why we have baptisms as soon as a person is ready and it’s why we take communion each week.  Because as Jesus said we must “eat and drink”.  We must “feed on Him” in order to “abide in Him”.  And communion is the time in which we press pause and reflect upon His death and our belief that because of Jesus we have been given eternal life.  It starts, continues, and ends with Him.

This week within your Core 52 books you’re going to be reading a chapter called Communion.  And within it Mark Moore explains that communion is not just a time of remembrance but that it’s also a “re-enactment.”  Because here’s what he writes on page 236.  He says:

This observance isn’t merely thinking about what Jesus did.  It’s more like reenacting.  Every year since the Exodus (fifteen centuries earlier), Jews had gathered in family groups around a table with a very specific script and props.  The unleavened bread represented the haste with which they left Egypt.  For Jesus, the wine represented the blood of the covenant.  The Passover lamb retold the story of their escape from Egypt.  The bitter herbs - dipped in the special sauce, haroseth - represented their bitter bondage.  The table itself was the storyboard of Israel’s founding of a nation.

Fascinating.  So stop and think about what that means with regard to communion.  Historically we know that God created the nation of Israel when He sent Moses to Egypt and then freed the people through the Ten Plagues and the crossing of the Red Sea.  God then told the people to always remember the 10th Plague through a festival called Passover.  And for centuries and centuries the Jewish people did just that.  They remembered how God saved them and set them free through a weeklong festival called Passover which finished with a meal on Friday which was the highlight of the entire event.  The Passover meal.  It was also called the Seder meal.

And within it they set a table filled with symbolism.  There was the lamb that reminded them of how in Egypt a lamb was slain and its blood was placed upon the door posts so that God would “pass over” them and only judge the Egyptians.  There was unleavened bread to remind them of how they were told to leave Egypt in haste or quickly.  The bitter herbs remind them of their bitter bondage as slaves.  But then there were also four cups they used.  They drank four cups to remember the promises God made to them found in Exodus 6:6-7.  The first cup was called the Cup of Sanctification because it reminded them of how God had promised to sanctify them or set them apart and set them free from their bondange.  The second cup was called the Cup of Deliverance because God had promised to deliver them from slavery.  The third cup was called the Cup of Redemption because God had said He would redeem His people.  And the fourth cup was the Cup of Praise because it spoke of how God had made His people His own through this story of salvation and redemption.

And this tradition continued for centuries.  But it all changed on the night that Jesus was betrayed.  Because when Jesus brought His disciples into the Upper Room in order to share in a final meal with them in a moment called the Last Supper He walked them through this story for the very last time within His life.  And as He did so He explained that He had longed for this final moment.  And He explained through one of the cups, likely the second one, that He was going to die and would not drink again until His Kingdom came.  And then He broke the unleavened bread and explained that it was His body.  He said, “This is My body.  Do this in remembrance of Me.”  And then after supper He took the fourth cup, the Cup of Praise, and he said, “This cup which is poured out for you is the New Covenant in my blood.”  Jesus took this meal which had symbolized the birth of their nation and the freedom they received to now mean something completely different.  Something completely new.  It now represented the story of salvation He would provide for them and for all who would believe through His death and resurrection.

You see what Jesus taught the crowd who was looking for Him after the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand was the same lesson He taught His disciples in the Upper Room.  Eternal life starts, continues, and finishes with Him.  And what God expects of us is to believe in Him.  He wants us to acknowledge three truths over and over again throughout our lives to the very end:  “My eternal life is because of Jesus.  My eternal life is continuous in Jesus.  And my eternal life is finished by Jesus.”  And through my belief in Him we eat and we drink.  Each and every week.

So the question is, “Will you eat and drink in Jesus through your beliefs?”  Will you do that today?  Tomorrow?  And throughout your life?  Nothing short of eternal life is dependent upon your belief in Him.  Because…

Eternal life depends on your willingness to eat and drink in Jesus.

Let’s pray.

[Prayer:  For God to help us maintain our beliefs in Jesus.  Eternal life depends on it.]

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